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A Blind Poetics

I set out to stand on poetry, like the aerialist who walks on a wing. I saw others had done it. James Wright and Li Po, Emily Dickinson sometimes, when the light was right. I learned you could walk the thinnest ledge provided the light was right. Poetry could be thread. Of course. It was always nothing more than thread. Penelope was Homer. Of course. (In ancient times the blind were known as weavers…) And so I walked on delicate strings, navigating on guttural sounds and stertorous breaths. Poetry and your feet. The lungs in between.

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Small wonder I can walk in the dark. Small wonder I can walk with a dog who watches for me.

It is all just poetry on a flimsy wing. And the heart like a bird in a granary. But high up, eyelashes transmitting bone thoughts, you are someone at last. Not the reader of magazines. Not the telephone talker. You are the riff of gravity which is not diagrammable but is a living curve of joy.